Top UK spies revealed as wankers

The UK spy agency MI6 experimented with using semen as invisible ink; presumably because this fluid was readily available to several of their field agents on a few moments' notice. The agent in charge of the project? Mansfield Cumming. This and other revelations appear in MI6: The History of the Secret Intelligence Service 1909-1949, to be published this week.

A member of staff close to "C", Frank Stagg, said that he would never forget his bosses' delight when the Deputy Chief Censor said one day that one of his staff had found out that "semen would not react to iodine vapour".
Stagg noted that "we thought we had solved a great problem".
However, the discovery also led to some further problems, with the agent who had identified the novel use having to be moved from his department after becoming the butt of jokes.

MI6 'used bodily fluids as invisible ink' (via Super Punch)

(Image: Invisible ink, a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from superfantastic's photostream)

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

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doingdoing

Mansfield Cumming?
- nanite2000
  
  Nominitive determinism.
- Earth Man
  
  Man’s field cumming?!
Anonymous

First stirred….then shaken!
Brainspore

I bet James Bond gets a lot of flak for wasting precious agency resources.
doingdoing

Cue the James Bond theme next time you’re making invisible ink… Cumming… Man’s Field Cumming…
Anonymous

humiliated, the agent went on to construct a Rocket faster than sound itself…
Anonymous

“butt” of jokes and “semen” on the same page …

along with “wankers”, “cumming” and “stagg”

I’m not sure I can cope with this …

ROTFLMFAO
PeaceNerd

shaken, not stirred
dross1260

Not exactly “Lie back and think of England.”
Brainspore

*KNOCK KNOCK* “What are you doing in there?”

“Just a minute! I’m, uh, writing a letter!”
bimtott

Pynchon described a product much like this in Gravity’s Rainbow. But instead of being the ink, the semen would reveal the invisible ink.

The idea was that the message would be sent along with a pornographic illustration custom-chosen based on the intended reader’s predilections.

Amazing how more and more of the crazy ideas introduced in the story turn out to be true! He did have access to a spectacular amount of technical documents from WWII, so I guess it’s no surprise.
- knoxblox
  
  First Russian spy: What have you got there? A secret letter?
  
  Second Russian spy: I think so, but I can’t read it. The pages are stuck together!
Mr_Voodoo

Mansfield… that kid’s got spunk.
twobeeshawn

best post ever!
Prufrock451

Lean forward and think of England!
Mr. Sleepy

You think these fools are the first to come up with this mess?? No, its’ been done by those of us who’d been in prison for years.
Dennis

The penis mightier than the sword!
dethwolf_x

Talk about mixing business with pleasure.
Anonymous

Ah the pen is mightier makes perfect sense now!
Anonymous

The jokes just write themselves!
bjacques

Dammit, bimtott beat me to it. Gravity’s Rainbow is still one of my favorite books ever. Kryptosam! One of the many inventions of the sinister Dr. Lazlo Jamf…I seem to remember during the heady Mondo2000 days someone mentioning making sex toys out of “Imipolex-G.”
Teresa Nielsen Hayden

Pedantic note: the old term for having your ink curdle on you was “mothering.” I have some very old packaging for powdered ink that says WILL NOT MOTHER IN THE WELL. That one took me a while to figure out.
Michael Smith

I wonder what the female spies used?
I guess they would have to get their hands on the required material.
macegr

James Bond has expanded beyond the occasional secret message and now circulates a daily secret newspaper.
- Ugly Canuck
  
  James Bond?
  
  James Bond has the coolest guitar in his theme song:
  
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ii1tc493bZM
  
  7,600,000 + views?
  Mancini was one of the great ones, wasn’t he?
Anonymous

More here from “Mark Seamen”

As an account of the first 40 years of MI6 is published, cabinet office historian Mark Seamen shows the BBC’s Gordon Corera some of the gadgets available to early secret agents.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-11383496
Anonymous

The greatest job ever?
“Invisible ink” supplier.
Anonymous

I could have written War and Peace by the time I turned 16…
Anonymous

This is alluded to Pynchon’s “Gravity’s Rainbow”.
MichaelRN

Just keep a stiff upper…oh, never mind.
Ugly Canuck

Well…SMERSH made me say Mancini…I meant john Barry, of course!
Damn you, Blofeld!
Anonymous

This has been public knowledge for years.

One of the jokes that circulated in MI6 at the time was that every man was his own stylus.
- shadowfirebird
  
  That joke is normally used to refer to the use of urine as secret ink.
  
  I wonder what the female spies used?